Tag: Heart rate

I am 49, just started running about a year ago, just got a watch with
a heart rate monitor in it. I am perimenopausal and am taking quite a
few supplements, estrogen and DHEA. Lately, I’ve seen my heart rate go
up as high at 196 at certain points in my runs. My average is about
172-174. Do you think I should be concerned? Or is the average more of
what I should pay attention to?

Wow, JJH, It’s very flattering that you trust us with an important thing like your health!

That said, we’re not doctors. Any time you’re on medication, we strongly encourage you to reach out to the medical professional that prescribed the medication to check for potential side effects that could be exacerbated by heavy exercise.

Our first question is, how hard to you feel like you’re running? If those readings are coming during an easy jog, see below.

But, if you’re getting those readings and you feel any sort of heart flutters or palpitations; if you’re feeling dizzy, short-of-breath, seeing spots, etc. STOP RUNNING. Seek medical attention before you continue.

Okay, but what about the heart rate spikes?

It should be pointed out that wrist-based heart rate monitors are notoriously inaccurate. Even chest strap monitors can have their issues — they need batteries replaced, not to mention you need to have a conducive liquid applied to the electrodes. It is possible, and even pretty likely, that your device isn’t reading your heart rate accurately.

Also remember a number of things can cause your heart rate to be higher than normal: being sick, taking different medications, being stressed, etc.

What numbers should I be looking for?

There are a lot of variables here: age and weekly mileage are two important ones. Provided everything is working correctly … those numbers are way high.

Experts have put out a number of formulae for calculating your max heart rate; some recent studies have adjusted women’s to be 206 minus 88 percent of a woman’s age. For a 49-year-old woman like JJH, that’ 163. MAXIMUM. As in, your heart can literally not beat faster than that. Again, these are fairly generic ways to ballpark your max, and everyone is different.

Generally, regardless of your max HR, easy runs should be 50-70% of your max HR. Speedwork will take you 75-90% depending on the workout — for example, you might do 200m repeats at 90% but tempo runs at 80%.

This primer on pacing may be a good refresher on deciding your pace for a workout.

Second marathon taper in a month as we recovered from the Chicago Marathon and then are heading into Monumental Marathon on 11/4 in Indianapolis. This is NOT normal for me, I have never run more than one marathon in a year, let alone a month. But I did back to back weekends of 20-milers leading into Chicago so there’s some evidence that this will work.

Monday – After I finished presenting at a conference I swam 2,600 yards and then ran 4 very easy miles (average HR 136). New shoes (361 Sensation 2), but they were too big.

Tuesday – You know those days where you think you know what the workout is so you don’t check it and it’s not the same as the team? Yeah, I had one of those. Six fabulous miles with 3 mile steady state in the middle, but I did the stead state easier than I should have. Oh well, average HR 153.

Wednesday – swam 2,300 yards with drills in the morning before driving to Michigan.

Thursday – after facilitating a retreat all day I ran 5 miles JUST finishing before it got dark, which was good since I was in an unfamiliar place. Average HR 148. Correct size Sensation 2 shoes.

Friday – swam at a Y where I was working before driving home. 25 meter pool made for a long workout. 2,300 meters. The Y didn’t have fins so I had to improvise a little. Then when I got home I bought my own fins and kickboard.

Saturday – 10 mile total run with 8 at marathon goal pace or faster (75-80% max HRR). 1 mile warmup and then team start for the goal pace. We did it as multiple out-and-backs to minimize street crossings. I ran the first 2 with HR between 145 and 150, the middle 4 between 150 and 155, and the last 2 between 155 and 160. This lead to the following splits:

12:16, 12:41, 12:11, 12:18, 12:16, 12:26, 11:53, 11:37

Goal pace is 12:30. Feeling mostly optimistic. Except that little voice about never having run marathons this close together. Saucony Guide 9 with more than 300 miles on them (near retirement).

Sunday – lifted with my trainer and did high reps on a bunch of upper body – I’m going to feel that in the pool tomorrow. 15 miles on the bike trainer with a workout that would be 800 repeats if it was running. Ave HR 136.

This morning, 57.7 percent of me was water. My resting heart rate was 57. And I averaged 184 steps per minute on my run.

Fitness tracking and wearables are a huge market, and you might even have a device on your holiday wish-list. Pretty likely when I mentioned resting HR, you thought about checking yours on the device on your wrist.

I’m a data junkie: most of my training is heart-rate based, and I have a Garmin Forerunner 35 plus a Garmin Index Smart Scale. But a lot of that data is logged, recorded, archived … and never used for anything.

So what the heck do all these numbers mean, and which ones matter? I talked to two guys named Matt who helped me sort through the data I’m collecting to help make me and YOU better runners.

Heart rate. It’s one of those things runners either track obsessively or scoff at the mere thought of thinking about it. While I’m not quite obsessed with tracking my heart rate, I do find tracking it very helpful. For me and many others, tracking resting heart rate, if not while running but at the very least first thing in the morning, can reveal a lot about how our training is going or our overall health. If you wake up to a higher than usual heart rate, you know you might be getting sick or need a recovery day. Your heart rate getting lower over time at the same pace? Congratulations, you’re building aerobic fitness!

But as scientists have found in the last few years, your runner’s heart can tell you a lot more than that, if you know how to listen. You might have seen that some of the newer GPS watches will tell you not only your heart rate, but also your heart rate variability, or HRV. Some even purport to tell you how stressed you are based on this information. Apps like ithlete, Sweetbeat, and EliteHRV do the same, claiming to track your recovery and training progress using your HRV.

Just because someone else can handle it all doesn’t mean you can. Image via wikimedia.org.

Salty runners are strivers. We train hard, we aim high and we’re tough. These are the qualities that enable us to succeed and blow the lid off what we ever thought was possible.

But sometimes these qualities are the exact thing that gets us into trouble. Sometimes we train too hard. Sometimes we aim too high. And sometimes we are even too tough. I think most of us understand this, but the line between striving for our best and overtraining can be a bit blurry. Even when we think we’re doing everything right–even not doing as much as we’ve done in the past–even then, we might be pushing too hard for our current selves.

Overtraining is a serious condition that can have lifetime repercussions. Every single serious runner should know what overtraining is and what signs and symptoms to look for so she can nip it in the bud before it becomes a chronic problem. Overtraining is not isolated to those running over 100 mile weeks, those training to make the Olympic team or the super fast among us. It can happen to any of us. It happened to me.

Even with my crazy heart condition, I never ever used a heart rate monitor in training. Lately, though, I’m starting to think now is the time. For the past 4 years I have done pace-based training; every workout I did had a prescribed pace, which meant I was a slave to the watch. In being so pace-focused, I feel like I’ve lost a sense of what the right effort is for various workouts. I suspect I was often pushing myself too hard for the purpose of workouts, but then again sometimes I might not have been pushing myself hard enough. Perhaps a heart rate monitor could help me get the effort right. I’m hoping it could also help me know that I’m recovering enough too.

The problem is I have no idea what I’m doing! What do I need? Do I really want to run with a chest strap? I don’t want to spend a fortune on a heart rate monitor since I already have the GPS thing covered. Also, I’m not exactly sure what I would need to do to start. I need help!

That’s where you come in! Do you train by heart rate? If so what heart rate monitor do you use? Have any tips for a newbie heart rate tracker? If you don’t track it, why not?

Yesterday’s ablation gave new meaning to the term heart burn. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The last time I dedicated an entire post to my crazy heart, I explained how I came to be diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia, or SVT. SVT is a heart condition in which the sufferer experiences sudden onset of rapid heart rate which can reach 200 beats per minute or more. While it is not life threatening, it sure can be scary. I am happy to report that after an often annoying, some times downright frightful ride that began when I was a teenager, I am 95% confident I am now free of SVT!

Last week, I told you why you need to start paying attention to your resting heart rate. This week, I’ll talk about some specific ways you can both measure and track that information. Personally, I’ve known for years about how helpful taking my resting heart rate can be, but I’ve only recently started actually paying attention to it. The reason? I couldn’t figure out a good way to actually get that information from bed first thing in the morning. Something tells me this is a very common excuse, so let’s look at how to get over that hump.

There are three basic ways to take your resting heart rate: taking and counting your pulse, using a heart rate monitor, and using a pulse oximeter. Let’s take a look at the pros and cons of each: Read more >>

Get a group of experienced runners together, and sooner or later the topic of conversation will turn to heart rate. Maybe someone will talk about how they bailed on their speedwork last week because their resting heart rate was higher than normal. Maybe someone will casually mention how the nurse thought her equipment was wrong the last time they went in for a physical because their resting heart rate was so low. I have heard several conversations on this topic that turned into a bizarre form of reverse one-upmanship, where the winner was the one with the lowest value. In the interest of trivia, the winner of the game usually brags about a resting heart rate around 40.

Even if you’re not interested in impressing people at the group run, your resting heart rate is a valuable tool that can help you stay healthy in your quest to big PRs. Read more >>